Thursday, 5 September 2013

The Rise of the Titan, Mr. Raghuram Govinda Rajan

Indian
Media and the whole of India kept their eyes wide open when the 23rd Governor
of the Reserve Bank of India ‘Raghuram Govinda Rajan’ the man expected to stop
the steep decline of Rupee against Dollar took charge on 4th September 2013.

When
asked about the falling Rupee, Mr. Rajan replied that all the gloom and doom
are overdone. He said that ‘Our task today is to build a bridge to the future,
over the stormy waves produced by global financial markets. I have every
confidence we will succeed in doing that’. Rajan also said that his primary
focus would be on the transparency and predictability in the Central Bank’s
functioning.

When
a reporter asked that him, will RBI ever be able to stop the decline of Rupee?
To this Mr. Rajan smartly replied that a Central Bank can Never Say Never. He
said that people should have a clear knowledge about the Policies of the
Reserve Bank of India and how the Policy actually works out. Rajan has set the
date of September 20th to review the next policy. He has postponed the original
date so as to consider all the major developments in the deal.

But
a major question arises: What would be the actual steps taken to break the
Rupee fall? To support the Rupee, Mr. Rajan yesterday announced steps such as;
enhanced limits for exporters to re-book cancelled forward exchange contracts. He
also announced plans to revise and strengthen the monetary policy framework.
The other major plans were to focus on export revenue and inward remittances.

When
asked about New Banking Licenses, Mr. Rajan expects them to be issued by early
January next year. All Major Corporates like Tata Sons, L&T, Reliance
Group, Aditya Birla Nuvo, Bajaj, Shriram and Religare have sought for banking
licenses. With major competition in the banking industry, with the emerging Private
Sector, Public Sector, Co-operative and Foreign Banks; the addition of the
above mentioned giants would be a boom to the industry, predicts Rajan.

Rajan,
who is a Graduate of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) New Delhi, the Indian
Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, a Gold Medalist at the IIT and IIM says that, he hopes to do the
right thing and get Indian Rupee to an economically stable position.